George Ibrahim Abdullah: The Longest-Serving Political Prisoner in France

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Thousands of French fans have assembled on the Champs-Elysees avenue for celebrations after France won the Russia 2018 World Cup final football match. Supporters gathered to welcome their World Cup champions, in Paris on 16 July 2018; waving their national flags, and then made their way to the Elysees Palace, where they were greeted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

We send our warmest congratulations on this great accomplishment and on the French National Day. As France claims to foster and spread the high values of liberty, equality and fraternity. On behalf of the Lebanese people, we would like to question the French government, “Until when France will keep unfairly detaining the Lebanese pro-Palestinian political prisoner George Ibrahim Abdullah? Until when France will France keep appearing in an insolent image?”

Meanwhile, the French judiciary has rejected various parole request submitted by George Abdullah, who has been in jail since 1948. Indeed, Abdullah has been eligible for parole since 1999, but eight previous applications were all rejected, particularly after the U.S. congressional representative Grace Meng had urged France not to release him, on 28 January 2014.

France has wrapped up the farce of its judiciary, which is greatly subservient to the American administration and to the Federation of Jewish organizations in France, known as the CRIF. Actually, the CRIF; Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions dictates what the French court ought to do, i.e. to oppose any attempt to release George Abdullah.

George Ibrahim Abdullah is a pro-Palestinian political prisoner, a leftist freedom fighter. He is neither Palestinian nor Muslim but a nationalist Lebanese Christian hero. He says, “I am not a criminal. I am a combatant.” He was born in 1951, in Tripoli, studied and worked as a teacher until 1979.

At a very young age, George Ibrahim Abdullah joined the Syrian Social Nationalist Party a Lebanese political party that believed in a “Greater Syria.” The party aimed at in incorporating Lebanon, Syria and several Arab countries, including Palestine, which should resist the Zionist illegitimate entity through armed struggle.

Later Abdullah joined in the 1960s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a resistance movement that was formed after the occupation of the West Bank by the Zionists, in 1967. Indeed, the PFLP was the only Palestinian faction formed and headed by George Habash; a Greek Orthodox Christian revolutionary. Habash believed in combining Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology.

George Abdullah is believed to have founded the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions, in 1979, in the village of Koubeyat, where he grew. Further, he enlisted his four brothers, Joseph, Emile, Robert and Maurice, and several of Marxist Maronite Christians.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) originally trained those Maronite nationalists, most of whom are from northern Lebanon. George Abdullah and his comrades have sought to demonstrate that not all Lebanese Christians favour the Zionist entity and that they are dedicated to Palestine and its cause. This view emerged in a time where the West deluded Lebanese Christians that the Palestinian refugees threat their existence. For instance, the Lebanese Forces; largest Maronite militia, were the Zionists’ allies.

The Lebanese Forces were originally created in 1976 as an umbrella organisation coordinating all the right-wing party militias of the Lebanese Front, mainly composed of the Kataeb Party. After the assassination of Bachir Gemayel, Samir Geagea, former commander-in-chief of the armed organisation, led the party, during the Lebanese Civil War.

In 1984, George Abdullah was arrested under a vague accusation related to the complicity in the assassinations of Col. Charles Robert Ray; an American military attaché, and Yacov Barsimentov; a Zionist diplomat, in Paris, in 1982. Three years later, even though the court was not able to present concrete evidence against him; Abdullah was sentenced to life imprisonment and still in custody in France.

A former director of the French intelligence agency, Yves Bonnet, later said that Abdullah was the victim of “an illegal intelligence conspiracy.” Since then, he does not compromise or bow his head, as he is proud of his resistance’s history and beliefs against the Zionist occupier.

Sondoss is a Lebanese freelance journalist and translator; based in Beirut, Lebanon. Al Asaad writes on issues of the Arabs and Muslims world, with a special focus on the situation in Yemen and Bahrain.